Wednesday, January 13, 2010

How To Be More Attractive: Gotta Have Sense Of Humor


Men having great sense of humor ranked number three as being a personality trait that attracts women on survey results conducted by several magazines. Topping the survey is physical appearance and number two, financial stability.

Laughing can be very beneficial to one’s health, according to researchers. And a great sense of humor, which creates laughter, can make a lot of difference specially when dating women.

A lot of women see a guy with a great sense of humor very attractive mainly because it makes the conversation a lot lighter, it makes them laugh and dating a man who is very serious in his outlook in life makes the conversation heavy and can become very boring, according to studies, among two hundred college students.

The same study indicated that women like intelligent men and a great sense of humor is linked to intelligence, as a man with wits can think fast, able to produce a joke instantly that is suitable to the situation is clever indeed and is no “non-sense”.

Indeed, “laughter is the best medicine”. Considerable research and studies have proved that laughter and humor benefits the body as well as the emotion. It boost the “immune system”, reduces stress, relax the muscles, “lowers blood pressure”, increases pain tolerance and hastens the process of healing. No wonder women feel so good being with a man with great sense of humor!

Men having good sense of humor are always cheerful. To them, each day is sunny. Should dark clouds appear, they depend on laughter, confident that all problems will pass and instead of being discouraged, they move on with so much hope.

Even if a man is not really that attractive physically, but with a great sense of humor, women are usually drawn to him. Why? Because according to most women in a survey result, they are more at ease with these types of men, as they make the women laugh and as a result, let them feel that they can open up almost anything; a man with a great sense of humor encourages the woman to be confident.

Generally, men with a sense of humor have so much spunk in life. Not only can they come up with a joke unrehearsed, but also can take a joke.

Here are ways to sharpen and improve your sense of humor:

1. Encourage an environment of laughter and humor in the relationship that you have by concentrating on the comical or funny side of things and delighting in the laughter that they bring to mind. Then, you will soon begin to see humor in things that you do, including the problems that may come and handle them without stress in your relationship.

2. When you feel that you do not laugh that much and you feel that you should correct this, associate yourself with fun loving and humorous people. Try to go to happy places and you and your partner can engage in fun and lively activities.

3. Try laughing at yourself and at the situations around you. Many individuals are not able to laugh because they are insecure of themselves and because of personal fears. Often, they are scared to look silly in front of others and give the impression to be foolish, according to psychiatrists. It is essential to become conscious that all people make or commit mistakes and it is when you put up a pleasant laugh can make such mistake appear human.

4. Read on humorous books and collect clean jokes. Then when the need arises, there is always a joke ready to lighten up someone else’s day!

5. So as to neutralize disagreement in your relationship, use humor. When things in your relationship get uptight, “self deprecating humor” can lighten things. “Self-deprecating humor” encourages humility and nurtures courage, needed to take off the mask that one wears when insecure and uncovers one's weakness to his partner.

Having sense of humor in your relationship will add so much zest, help it become rewarding and can help both partners see life in a different perspective. A more carefree, cheerful and positive relationship will prosper as a result of a happy disposition between couples.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Healthy Grief, Unhealthy Grief

We all know that it is in one’s highest good to grieve the loss of a relationship. Healthy grief releases feelings rather than allowing them to get stuck in the body. Healthy grief allows the griever to heal the loss and move on with life.

Yet grief is not always healing. Many of us have known people who were stuck in their grief, seemingly locked into the past and unable to move forward in their lives.

What is the difference between those who feel their grief and move on and those who get stuck in it? The difference lies in what they believe they have lost. When people believe they have lost their source of love, their grief will feel unending.

Gary had been in a three-year relationship with Samantha when Samantha decided to end the relationship. Gary was devastated. In this relationship, like in his past relationships, Gary was a taker – always trying to get love but unable to give love or share love. Samantha gave him a lot of love, but she often felt very lonely with him. Gary was devastated when she left because his source of love was gone. He was not grieving the loss of Samantha as a person he loved. He was grieving the loss of her love for him. He was grieving as a lost wounded child rather than as a loving adult.

As a result, Gary became stuck in his grief. He was stuck in feeling like a victim – stuck in “poor me.” Gary had never done the inner work to develop an adult part of himself that could bring love to himself and share it with others. He felt lost, abandoned, and hurt. No matter how much he cried, no healing occurred. Because he was abandoning himself, he just continued to feel alone and despairing. Sometimes he was angry at Samantha for abandoning him and other times he was angry at himself for not being a better partner. He had many regrets that plagued him, and a constant inner refrain was, “If only I had……” “If only I had listened to her more, maybe she wouldn’t have left.” If only I had told her how beautiful she is, maybe she wouldn’t have left.”

Frank, on the other hand, was in deep grief over the death of his beloved wife, Beth. He had loved Beth with his whole heart and he missed her terribly. Yet Frank’s grief was totally different than Gary’s grief. Frank missed Beth’s laugh. He missed her joy, her caring for people, her sense of wonder. He missed her as a person, and he missed being able to share his love with her. Frank had no regrets because he had not been a taker. He had loved Beth totally and was deeply grateful for the time he had with her. But Frank was actually fine. His grief came in waves, and he cried when it came. Then it washed through and he was fine again.

Frank was fine because Beth had not been the source of his sense of self. Frank had a strong loving inner adult who was connected with a spiritual source of love and wisdom. This was his Source, not Beth. Frank was a person who took full responsibility for his own pain and joy. He had never made Beth responsible for his feelings or his wellbeing.
Because he had never abandoned himself, he could miss Beth and grieve for her without feeling abandoned, lost, victimized and alone.

Gary, on the other hand, was not fine, no matter how much sadness he released, because Samantha had been his Source of love, his Higher Power. He had handed to her the job of defining his sense of self, so when she left, all he could feel was abandoned. Gary had handed his Inner Child – his feeling self – to Samantha. He had made Samantha responsible for his feelings, so when she left, he felt like an abandoned child. His Source of love had gone away.

Because Frank knew how to love himself, he knew how to love others. Within a couple of years, Frank was in another loving relationship.

Gary found another relationship within six months of losing Samantha, and six months after that was again alone. Until Gary decides to learn to take responsibility for his own feelings and needs, he will likely continue to lose relationship after relationship, and continue to be stuck in feeling like a victim of the women in his life.

Monday, December 28, 2009

Acknowledge Your Depression


Depression is an illness and needs to be acknowledged as such. It is not a reason to be ashamed. The reason so many people fail to seek help for their depression is that they are ashamed. Unfortunately, this is one of the feelings associated with depression anyway and makes the illness difficult to acknowledge.

If you are constantly feeling particularly low, well-meaning friends might tell you to “snap out of it” or even start to get irritated by your mood. Your depression will feed off this negativity and you start to wonder why you can’t just “snap out of it”. You then start to feel that there’s something wrong with you because it should be so easy and it’s just “not right” that you feel so bad all the time. Well, it’s not right and there is something wrong with you. You have a medical condition and you deserve treatment in the same way as any other patient. If you had a cold for six months would you ignore it and hope it would pass? No, you would dose yourself up with anything you could find and maybe see a doctor to find out if there’s an underlying reason for it to last so long.

Depression is sadness that lasts too long. Everyone is sad at some point in their lives but depression is more than that. It is a feeling that you can’t bring yourself up from the bottom. In the end you give up trying. People start to avoid you. You feel worse. You need to find external help to treat the problem in the same way as you would if you had a long-lasting cold. You could try herbal remedies – there are some in your pharmacy – or you could see your doctor. There may be an underlying physical cause for your depression.

If your doctor cannot help you they may refer you for counselling. Don’t be embarrassed to go for counselling but do make sure you are comfortable with your counsellor. If not, try another one. Counselling should not be discounted because you don’t feel comfortable with your first choice of practitioner. In everyday life you will naturally find that you get on with some people and clash with others. You cannot afford to have a personality clash with your counsellor. On the other hand you must be sure that it is a personality clash and not just that you don’t agree with what they are saying. A general rule is to go with your instincts. If you like the person and seemed to get on well in the first couple of sessions then stick with it because they might just have touched on the root cause of your problem.

In some cases, acknowledging depression may be difficult because you have lived with it so long that you don’t know whether it is depression or not. If you have grown up with depression it is possible not to realise that you are actually depressed because you have no concept of how normal people should feel. You may feel angry all the time or you may feel like going to the middle of an empty field and simply screaming. You may feel anxious, have trouble sleeping or even sleep too much. You may think that your family would be better off without you (and actually believe that to be true) and may have considered running away or suicide. You may worry about death all the time (yours or someone else’s) and not let yourself be happy just in case…… (or even “I must enjoy this now in case………..”). If you are feeling any or all of the above then you need to consider talking to someone. Even if it is just a friend or family member to start with, they may be able to advise you and encourage you to seek professional help.

Once you have acknowledged that you have depression please remember that it is a medical condition and can be cured. You don’t have to feel this way for ever. Nobody actually thinks of you the way you think they do. Talk to someone. Seek and accept help and you will find that there is a different way of seeing life.